Hindsight
by WriteOrLeft
Summary: Sherlock gains some perspective when he watches a DVD someone left outside his door that shows what happened on that fateful day outside St. Bart's. (i.e: the last few scenes of The The Reichenbach Fall.) Will be a 2 chapter story.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I tried to write one of those "characters watch/read" stories, but it ended up turning into something else… This is post- Season 3, Sherlock watching the last few scenes of TRF. Lemme know how I did?**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing from the Sherlock universe. ****Some lines of dialogue are taken directly from ****_The Reichenbach Fall_**** from BBC's Sherlock, but I do not own anything. All credit goes to the writers of BBC's Sherlock!**

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"Sherlock, _please _change the channel." John says from his chair. Mary is visiting her parents with the baby, so John has been staying at Baker Street for the past few days. The boys are having a slow week in terms of cases, and having just wrapped one up the day before, they are sitting in 221B and just having a day in. Sherlock is marathoning that terrible show where they try to confirm who the father of a child is. At only the second episode, John had started to get tired of it, but now at the fourth one, John has had enough.

Of course, Sherlock ignores John wholeheartedly, too engrossed in the crappy program to acknowledge his existence.

"Sherlock." John tries again.

Nothing.

"Fine, then." Angrily, John gets up from his chair and thwacks Sherlock on the back of his head. "I'm leaving, gonna go grab some takeaway for dinner." He grabs his coat off the hook and leaves, Sherlock not even noticing anything.

A short while later, someone knocks at the door, a loud, persistent knocking. The knocking had been going on for almost a minute before Sherlock finally heard it.

Knowing it wouldn't be anyone he knew, he yells annoyed, "Shut up! Either come in, or go away."

The knocking doesn't stop though, just continues. Being Sherlock, he stubbornly ignores it and turns up the television. When this fails, he grunts and shuts off the TV. The moment he does this, the knocking stops.

"I'm getting up, this better be good." He shouts, getting up and making the oh-so-difficult trek from his chair to the door.

"_What?" _He yells as he throws the door open to reveal that no one is standing there. "You've got to be kidding me." Sherlock goes to close the door when something catches his eye—a large yellow envelope rests on the floor with a label saying only one word: _Sherlock._

Intrigued, Sherlock picks it up and takes a quick cursory look down the stairwell to see absolutely no traces of anyone there.

Flicking open the envelope and kicking the door shut behind him, all in one motion, Sherlock plops back down on his chair and slides out the contents of the envelope—a DVD and a sheet of paper. It reads:

_Watch this. Maybe you'll finally appreciate what you have._

Sherlock pops the DVD in and hits _play_.

The screen shows him on top of Bart's on _that_ day, phone in hand, teetering on the very edge of the roof.

"Turn around, and walk back the way you came, now." He hears himself say.

"No I'm coming in." John states confusedly. Seeing him up close feels so strange… When he was up on the roof it was so much easier. The distance made it feel less real, John looked so far away. But this… Sherlock shakes the thoughts aside.

He watches as he tells John to listen, and sees John loyally do what Sherlock asked him to.

"Sherlock?" He hears John say.

Sherlock mumbles the words as his on-screen version says them at the same time. "Okay, look up, I'm on the rooftop."

The scene jumps to John looking up, swallowing a huge lump in his throat. Sherlock watches as John's face transforms from one of confusion to one filled with so much _hurt_ that he has to turn his face away. _Is that really what he looked like?_

"Oh, God." John croaks.

Looking at anywhere but the TV screen, Sherlock hears himself lie to John. He remembers that day so clearly… _He _knew he was lying, so his words shouldn't have had such an impact on himself. But John didn't know… and that's why it was so difficult. Sherlock prides himself on being a good actor, heaven knows his work calls for it all the time.

But that day above Bart's… the stuttering, the cracks in his voice, the tears… There was absolutely no acting necessary.

He'd known John for such a short period of time, and had gone his _entire life_ without even 1 person to call a friend. To this day it amazes Sherlock how quickly John Hamish Watson became so important to him.

Every word he spoke that day, every lie, was a knife that dug deeper and deeper the more he spoke, not because he didn't want to, but because he knew that he was hurting John. _Sherlock Holmes has no feelings_, people say. And it's true. But not in John's case.

Sherlock hears himself discard his phone on screen and only now does he look up at the screen.

He knows what's coming next—the scream that didn't need to be heard through a phone, loud enough from so far away, and so filled with pain that it tore right through Sherlock Holmes infamous steel heart.

"_NO! SHERLOCK!" _He hears his best friend roar.

Sherlock watches as he extends his arms like an angel, waiting to fall down onto the safety mattress that had been carefully planted out of view. He sees himself float down and hears a sickening thud, and watches John's scramble to near him, getting hit by a biker, falling, blacking out and regaining his consciousness. He watches Mycroft's careful plan unfold, but it doesn't help at all when he realises that for his friend, this wasn't a plan at all. This was an all too terrible nightmare come true. This was something _real_ that John had to endure, the aftereffects of which had to live with and overcome for _two years. _And here he is, going on with his life, not even having thought of how much he had hurt John.

That day at the bonfire, Sherlock had gotten just the smallest taste of what it would have felt like to lose John. But he had gotten him back so quickly- John waited _two years._

John Watson, usually so valiant and strong is completely _broken_ as he pushes past crowds of medics to get closer to his best friend.

"No, he's my friend, he's my friend, please." John mumbles, weak and stumbling either from his own fall—or from Sherlock's.

Sherlock watches intently, his eyebrows furrowed together as his best friend cries over his body until the screen goes black.

He doesn't know how long he stays there, staring at the TV and sitting in the silence that has filled the suddenly too-big room.

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**A/N: Chapter 2 coming soon, hopefully so please stay tuned. Thanks for reading and reviewing!**

**-WriteOrLeft**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: This was hard to write. Feels and emotions aside, I really wanted to keep the characterization as accurate as possible. Sherlock is so difficult to write, but I tried my best. Hopefully it's believable and doesn't suck too bad.**

**The story is complete for now, but if there is enough interest, I may continue. **

**Please let me know how I did :)**

**Thanks for reading,**

**-WriteOrLeft **

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**Disclaimer:**** I own nothing from the Sherlock universe.**

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John returns an hour later to find his best friend sitting in _his_ chair instead of his own. His tall, lanky body is somehow folded to fit entirely in the seat. Sherlock sits with his knees tucked up all the way up to his chest, and has his chin resting on his knees while he hugs his body as close to himself as possible and stares intently back at his own chair.

"Sherlock?" John calls, depositing the take-away he brought on a table. "You okay?"

The detective doesn't answer.

Walking over to sit in Sherlock's chair, he waves his hand in front of his face. "Sherlock." He tries again.

"Hmm?" He answers.

"What-what's going on?"

"I'm fine. Nothing. Did you bring food? Smells good." His friend rambles on. "Let's eat." He stands up, stretching and yawning. His face changes mid-yawn to one of complete confusion. "Hang on- how, how did I get here? I was sitting there-" He says, pointing to his usual chair and looks around bewildered.

"That's what I was wondering…" John says slowly. "You sure you're okay? You look a bit… dazed? Frazzled, maybe? Everything alright?"

"Hmm? Me, yeah. Fine, just fine. Let's eat, where's the food?" He turns to go to the table.

All throughout dinner John feels Sherlock staring at him when he thinks he isn't looking. But he's known him for too long, and as surely as he knows that the sky is blue, he knows that _something_ is on Sherlock Holmes' mind, and he won't find out what until he's ready to tell him himself.

After about 5 minutes of awkward silence between the two, John has had enough. He sets down his fork, annoyed at the echoing loud noise it creates.

"Alright, out with it, Sherlock." He demands.

Sherlock looks up. "Out with what?"

"Tell me what's wrong. I come home to see you curled in my chair, looking like someone just hit you, and now you keep staring at me. What. Happened."

"I wasn't staring." He says, and promptly shovels a fork of noodles in his mouth.

"No. None of that, Sherlock. You're never like this. You're not even in one of your zoned-out mind palace-y type of moods either, so don't try to tell me you're just thinking. Something happened while I was gone, and I want to know what."

Sherlock sighs. He opens his mouth as if he's about to say something then closes his mouth again. He does this action once more and then shakes his head. And takes another bite. "Don't worry." He tells John, and scoops up his plate. "I'm going to bed."

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John's worried, but he should have expected that, shouldn't he have? He doesn't want to admit it, but John Watson knows him too well. Of course he noticed, especially since he found him sitting in his chair instead of his own. He didn't even remember how or when he got there.

Sherlock paces his room, dragging his hands through his hair.

How can he even _begin_ to explain what's wrong when the answer to that question is _everything_?

After watching that DVD, he's realized that his entire relationship with Dr. John Hamish Watson is a lie. One-sided. Non-reciprocal. Selfish.

John does everything. John _is_ everything. He's the one who makes sure he's not smoking. He's the one who makes sure he's eating. The one who tells him when he's wrong and helps him when he needs it. Corrects him when he says something rude and fixes him when he's broken.

And what's has he done? Faked his death and let his best friend think he was dead for two years.

And for what reason? To what avail?

Sherlock doesn't have a good answer to that, and John _still_ forgave him.

That's the kind of person John is—the kind of person Sherlock hurt, the kind of person Sherlock will never be, the kind of friend Sherlock will _never_ deserve.

What's wrong? His mind is, that's what.

His stupid inability to _feel_ like normal people do. The incompetent way his tongue gets tied every time be tries to say something he thinks will be nice. And on the rare occasion he's able to stumble something out, what he says sends up being wrong wrong wrong.

Being a genius is great but why couldn't he just be normal?

All his life he had everything he wanted, everything except for one thing—a friend.

He grew up alone, ostracized, ridiculed, bullied, misunderstood. Pushed into the dirt in the schoolyard and called a freak so often he began to believe it.

And now he finally has a friend, a _best _friend. One who looks past everything the world thinks, and can see what no one else can.

John does everything while Sherlock does _nothing_.

Sure, he said that speech at his wedding that inexplicably made everyone cry. But that was different- he _had _to do that. John doesn't have to do half the things he does for Sherlock and doesn't even ask for anything in return.

How can Sherlock ever apologize for leaving him for so long? For being such a terrible friend?

Sherlock pulls at his hair in frustration. He needs to say _something_.

He hates this feeling... guilt, stabbing at his gut, clawing at his brain. He needs to fix this. It's too late to get the 2 years back, but he has to start somehow.

So, he makes up his mind and steels himself. He's going to open the door and explain everything.

One hand on the knob, he turns it and opens the door.

_John._

The doctor stands with his back facing him, watching the TV, playing the DVD of that wretched day.

"John."

John stops the disk and turns around, eyebrows knitted in silent question.

Sherlock takes the few steps necessary to cross the floor closer to John.

He doesn't know what to say, but he has to try.

"John, I—I don't. I— I saw it. I saw the disk, I don't know where it came from, and I— I'm sorry. I—"

John reaches out to touch his friend's shoulder and stop him.

"I know." He says quietly. "It's fine."

He has to stretch, but he hugs him, and Sherlock actually wraps one arm around him as well, thousands of words and no words at all passing through the two best friends.

* * *

Sherlock will never know who gave him the DVD, but he will forever be grateful.

They snap the DVD in two, and resume their night of TV watching.

And Sherlock lets John have the remote controller.


End file.
